WordPress 101: Everything You Need To Know

Most folks who do any blogging at all know something about WordPress. For some, however, this amazing tool continues to go overlooked. The information provided herein helps bring these facts to light and offers some helpful insights with regard to WordPress.

Choose a website design that is individualized for your WordPress site. Since it potentially saves you time it can appear like a good idea, but it won’t provide users with a great first impression. You want to show how your site is different from everyone else.

When it is time to begin posting, set up a schedule. By knowing when you need to post, you will be more motivated. The schedule feature will also allow you to write several posts at once and have them uploaded at pre-selected times.

If your post has a lengthy title, make sure to adjust the permalink. For instance, a title such as “Top Ten Way To Tame Unruly Children” can create a long URL. Use a few words that are descriptive of the blog.

Make sure that your work is saved at all times. Most likely, this is not the case. Clearing the cache can help solve this. Press and keep holding the Shift key as you refresh your browser, and you should then see your changes.

Use Alt and Title. Use both title and alternate text when uploading your images to your site. This is good for SEO, and it allows people who have disabled images to know what the images are about.

Unless you dictate differently, your posts always show up in a chronological order. Change the date if you want to rearrange the list. Open a post that you want to appear at the top and change the date located in the upper right corner. Click the date and change it. Save your post and its order will change.

WordPress can help you include video blogging on your site. Although you may have to put in a little more time, you will get rewarded for your effort in the end. A lot of web users are drawn to video blogging because of their personal visual preferences. A video can show them things that the written word just can’t convey, and as a result, it can be a very powerful tool.

Better your search engine rankings by taking a couple minutes with pictures before uploading them. Add in the tags for the alternate text and titles. When visitors pin your images to sites like Pinterest, the title you gave is what will be represented on their screen.

Learn what you need to know before you begin. Increased planning leads to a better executed blog. Learn about SEO, content creation, and how WordPress can best be used to your advantage.

Create the best greeting for the top of your WordPress website. This helps your visitors feel more welcome and interested, and the messages can be personalized depending on how the visitor got there. In this way, your page will seem more human, and it will be accessible via the plugin called WP Greet Box.

Omit special characters from the URLs of your blog posts. This makes it harder for search engine spiders to index your site, so you should get rid of them. Your URLs should also be shortened to just include keywords, so they do not overwhelm your visitors.

Allow users to email your articles if they want to. There are some people who cannot look at Twitter or Facebook in the office;however, they want to share your information with others. Use a WP-Email plugin to make this happen.

The greeting appearing at the head of the WordPress website page should be very engaging. A good greeting is more intimate for visitors and can relate to how this visitor found your blog. A possible plugin to use is WP Greet Box; using this will make the things feel less robotic.

Security is essential for WordPress users, so make your password is kept confidential. Also, only download reputable plugins and check the reviews before installing them. If your site gets hacked or has malware, you can lose everything you have worked so hard on.

Be certain users have the ability to email posts to themselves if they like. This is crucial for sharing as well, because many users may lack Twitter or Facebook access on the job, but they may want to share those articles. WordPress has an email plugin just for this purpose.

Make sure targeted titles and descriptors are always used. People will first see these through the search engines. That’s why titles and descriptions are so important. Try uisng SEO software like Scribe on your WordPress website. You can easily edit, change and remove items from your webpage.

Security is essential for WordPress users, so make your password is kept confidential. Additionally, don’t download plugins from unknown sites and read reviews prior to installing anything. If your site is hit with malware or by hackers, you can lose everything you worked on.

Make sure you maintain an organized media library. You might be tempted to simply put images right in, but you will find it gets cluttered fast. Instead, create folders and place your images in the appropriate folders. Just this simple move will make it much simpler to find (and use) photos in the future.

Organize your media library and keep it that way. You can lose track of your files if you upload them into the library directly. Instead, make folders and organize your pictures that way. This will make it easy to find images when you wish to use them again.

Search Engine Rankings

Be sure to always use the most updated version of WordPress on your site. Updates generally include security fixes that you will want to have. Older versions can corrupt your computer due to malware attacks. Install all the updates to keep your site secure.

Keep the plugins at a minimum. Some are enjoyable, but each ones adds to your site’s load time. You may decrease your search engine rankings and popularity because your site takes too long to load. Optimized websites perform best in search engine rankings.

Back up your blog on a regular basis. You must do this on a regular basis. In WordPress, you can use a plugin for this, such as Xcloner. Use whichever plugin or website you feel comfortable with to keep your blog backed up, however make sure you use more than a single location. It would be very unfortunate if you lost your blog.

Keep your WordPress updated. Updated versions will give you more security. Using an older version of WordPress opens up your site to malware attacks. So, to keep your site secure, always install WordPress updates.

You can connect separate posts by using a plugin that allows for internal linking. With these plugins, up to five links appear following each post. These links are related to the tag relevance of the posts that appear on your site.

Regular Basis

Be sure to pay attention to reviews of plugins when planning to use them. Don’t forget, anyone who knows programming can build these plugins. Don’t use plugins that are flawed and buggy. A plugin with many downloads and a high rating is usually a safe one to use.

Back up your blog on a regular basis. You must do this on a regular basis. The WordPress plugin Xcloner can make this task easier. Use the plugin or site you’re confident in for blog backup, but be sure to backup in a lot of places. It would be very unfortunate if you lost your blog.

If you’re trying to find hosting for your blog, select a host with tools capable of installing WordPress with a simple click. That will help you to avoid the problem of dealing with a separate database. A good host will create a blog domain on your behalf and a database to go with it.

Use a plugin to link your posts. This allows the reader to enjoy more content. Such plugins provide a list of 3-5 links near the end of every post that are related to the tags contained on all the site’s posts.

You need to enable comments for your WordPress blog. This will encourage a sense of community, and it will also help you to know more about the people who are reading your site. Don’t worry about spammers, there are plugins that allow you to screen comments before allowing them to be seen on your site.

Nobody wants to manually approve comments anymore. Akismet is great for this. Naturally, you could manually check comments, but it is easier to have them delivered to you for approval before posting. You aren’t saving much time this way.

Use a variety of blog authoring tools. Don’t find WordPress’ dashboard particularly helpful? Try a blog authoring program like Windows Live Writer. There are a lot of tools that work well with WordPress and make blogging more efficient. Try a few of them out, and find the one that works best with you.

There are a variety of blog authoring tools; check them all out. Are you not pleased with WordPress’s dashboard? You can use authoring programs to write blog posts, such as Windows Live Writer. A number of tools works well in conjunction with WordPress while providing increased efficiency. Give them a test run, and feel out which one works for you.

Highlight the author’s comments from visitors. Comments are often filled with questions and concerns. It can be far too easy to overlook such a question because it is lost in a group of others. It would be wise to make the author’s comments appear in a different hue. This way, visitors won’t have a hard time finding them.

Think about highlighting comments on an article that are made by the person who wrote the article. Many people note concerns or pose questions through the comment section. It is easy to miss something important as more and more people begin responding. To make them stand out, highlight your responses. This makes them easy to find.

Don’t forget that you can always add a button that prompts users to “read more”. Visitors to your blog do not want to be confronted with a vast block of text. Let visitors read more by clicking if they want to. Not doing this will give your blog a messy look.

Draft an outline of your potential site before you attempt to create it with WordPress. List all the things you’re wanting to accomplish with your website and think about what people will want to get from it. The time spent drafting a plan will help you when setting up your blog.

Some paid plugins may be worth your time. Think about the time involved compared to the price. If there are many great features and a low price, it may be worth it.

WordPress is hardly a new phenomenon. However, WordPress’ true potential has yet to be experienced by many of its users. With any luck, this article has ensured that you will not be among those who have failed to get the most out of this terrific tool.

You may need help when it comes to your blog or site. If you can recruit a volunteer or hire someone who has the skill to do the work, you will save time and money in the long run.